Skyscrapers in Chinese city become giant works of art with smart city lighting

Nicole Lee

Highlighting 9.2 kilometers of cultural heritage

Buildings along the 9.2-kilometer-long Zhongshan Road are a magnet for tourism. The new lighting system, designed by Toryo International Lighting Design Center and Huazhang Lighting Design, uses nearly 2,000 Philips Color Kinetics fixtures controlled and managed by Philips ActiveSite software. The lighting accentuates the architectural features of the buildings while creating sparkling night scenes in the city’s business district and Ningbo’s main square Tianyi Square.

“The lighting design of the Zhongshan Road project illuminated took advantage of powerful mix of color architectural lighting and world class narrow projection. Philips Lighting brought our design concept to life, delivering high performance energy efficient lighting and control software which enable everything to be monitored and controlled remotely. The design, the technology and controls combine to not only raise the bar of city illumination in China but does this in a highly sustainable way.” said Concept Designer, Dongliang XU from Toryo International Lighting Design Center.

The Philips ActiveSite lighting management system makes the lighting run flawlessly with dashboards for real time monitoring, control and management of individual light fixtures. It also enables energy savings of 30-40% to be realized compared to the previous lighting used.

“Philips Color Kinetics LED lighting fixtures are installed in more than 50,000 projects around the world. The Zhongshan Road project is our most extensive in China, spread out along a 9.2 kilometer stretch in which illuminated 37 buildings. This transformative project accentuates the city’s rich cultural heritage while enhancing tourism and raises the bar on smart city illumination in China, said Samuel Xiang, Head of Professional Channel, Philips Lighting China.

Setting the benchmark

Philips Lighting is committed to help cities and customers illuminate business landmarks more efficiently by providing advanced lighting systems and services that meet their design goals, lower energy use and operating costs.